Words

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Another One Bites the Dust, why? 😦 Chrisie Edkins, in many ways a confident trans role model and advocate, has passed away, circumstances as yet undisclosed. [update: it now appears this was suicide]

“Chrisie passed away in the early hours of Monday 12th June. There are no further details at this time. Her family have requested a period of time to privately mourn and grieve for their loss, after which, they will provide details of the funeral arrangements along with ways her friends and supporters can pay their respects”

Chrisie was a popular performer at many Prides including London 08/09, as well as being signed by modelling agencies Model Moi and All Image Solutions. This year she had offered to perform free at Prides worldwide.

She had appeared on the ITV This Morning and Trisha shows to talk about her transition and promote trans awareness.

Though brave, confident and transparent about her past life, and having been reported on in the Daily Mail and Echo, she was nonetheless as human and upset as the rest of us when media coverage got it wrong and portrayed her as something she was not.

Last year she tweeted:

“What makes life so good… knowing it ends so make the most of it as dead is on only certain thing.” (May 2012)

Here in the UK over a third of trans folk attempt to take their own lives, 80% think about doing so. In other countries such as Northern and Southern America those figures are higher still and transwomen in some countries are 49x more likely to get HIV. This week Greece has been rounding up transwomen on the pretext of sexual health and prostitution checks as if it were a fascist state of the late 1930s.Mental health issues will affect 1-in-4 of us, as I know myself, having attempted suicide on 3 occasions. Being trans may not be a mental illness but living with it can make you ill, and some choose the difficult path of exiting this world. Having lost 2 trans friends in the last year or so to unexpected physical illness, the loss is felt no less keenly, whatever the cause and my thoughts are with the family members left behind.To every trans person, or anyone else living a lie not a life, carpe diem, seize the day, enjoy the present, live life to the full, who nobody knows what tomorrow may bring.

RIP Chrisie x #chrisieedkins

PostScript
Some folk have thought it insensitive to use Another One Bites the Dust in the title, undeniably, it is. Death is offensive, insensitive, untimely, taboo and no respecter of persons. Chrisie’s death was a shock to me as the third trans friend’s death in 18 months. Less than 15 months ago was my third suicide attempt. Chrisie was a performed and singer, I can’t ask her now whether she’d appreciate the Queen song reference. That’s death for you!

Freddie Mercury himself was taken before his time. I was at Queen’s last ever full line-up concert at Knebworth in 1986 where a fan climbed a lighting rig tower to get a better view, just 2m from me, fell off and landed on another annoyed fan who stabbed him. The delay getting through the 120,000 strong crown led to his death. We were all held back for hours afterwards whilst the police looked for and eventually arrested 4 men.

I had a “suicide” playlist on my iPod – now renamed “depressed” as some were offended by it! Bohemian Rhapsody even appears on it based upon the lines, “I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all” which I listened to on repeat before one suicide attempt 4 years ago. Tears for Fears, Mad World, “The dreams in which I’m dyin’ / Are the best I’ve ever had” also appears.

Lost for words?
A wordsmith’s writer’s block struggling to pen the opening lines of their next triumphant trilogy is nothing compared to the jihad of gender identity struggle. Both the bigger picture of society’s defines and the microcosm of personal confines penalise the freedom of identity exploration and expression.

Unworthy labels
In 18 months being out/ed as first a crossdresser, then transgendered and now transsexual, I have struggled to find appropriate labels. As fast as I accept one that I hitherto feared then it loses its power.

Perhaps that is why I use transgendering, the verb defines my undefinition, charts my journeyed course, and fathoms my fluidity – as all gender and sexuality should be – fluid.

We are, I am, human first, gendered second and sexually orientated third. Perhaps I am human, first, second and third. I am humansexual, have fallen in love with a person, their gender is secondary, our sexuality irrelevant. To say I feel part of a third gender is to simply turn a false binary divide into a three way split when androgenous Adam before the Fall was hermaphrodite and bodily united with his unborn Eve, made male and female.

A term I floated for myself was freemale, accepting my birth sex/gender – though that was debated for the first 2 hours of my existence – and giving myself the freedom to express that maleness in a more free and female way.

The gender fuck was in being fluid, not trying to pass and wearing my exploration on the sleeve of my blouse.

On March 26 the London Times published the anguished article of a young 20 something crossdresser caught in the turmoil of whether to tell his girlfriend. The posted comments suggested therapy, he come out as gay, and the usual trite ignorant assumptions.